


Field of Shadows

by allthebros



Series: Harvest Falls [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Codependency, Established Relationship, M/M, Sequel, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 04:18:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17932688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebros/pseuds/allthebros
Summary: He’s been trying to look different from his ghost-self since then—trying to grow a beard, bulking up, even getting a tattoo along his left ribs. It makes him feel like he’s alive, Jonny thinks, like his body is real and solid and changeable. Because sometimes, Patrick has a hard time remembering he’s not dead.One year ago. One year since. It's Harvest Day and Jonny has to find Patrick once more. Find him and bring him back.





	Field of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to cooliofoolios, who, when I asked for timestamp requests, asked for one to We've Waited for the Calling. At first I told her it was probably not gonna be possible because the sequel I had/have in mind would be much longer than a timestamp, but the idea of writing something short for it wouldn't leave my mind, and then this story happened. It feels like the perfect bridge between the first story and the next one I'm hoping to one day write. So thanks, dear!
> 
> This will not make sense at all (and will even spoil you) if you haven't read the first part.
> 
> Thank you, as always, to sorrylatenew--for the support and the beta. And also to everyone who had kind words about the first story which was better received than I could have imagined.
> 
> Title of the fic is, once again, from Alison Sudol's "Escape the Blade" because I love me a good overarching theme. 
> 
> **CONTENT** : Impact/pain play. Rough sex. Facefucking. Trauma aftermath. Permanent injury (Jonny still only has one arm). Panic attack. Healing. The Power of Love.

 

 

Waking up alone isn’t unusual.

At first, Jonny assumes Patrick’s out for a run. He does that sometimes, slips out of bed when he can’t get back to sleep, careful in not waking Jonny up, puts on his running shoes and hits the streets of Chicago until he’s sweated every nightmare out of his skin.

Jonny drags himself out of bed. Drags his feet into the kitchen. Drags his whole body along the counter, too heavy for him to hold up, edge digging into his hip, and lists there as he waits for his coffee to brew. He blinks into the light from the window above the kitchen sink. 

It’s only on his way back that he notices them, Patrick's running shoes, lined up beside the front door of their apartment. Neat beside Jonny’s kicked off sneakers—a rubber mark along the bottom of the door where one bounced. 

In the bedroom, he stares at the work-out clothes folded in the dresser. His heart gives a kick and he picks up his phone; no texts. There are no notes on the fridge, no post-its stuck to the door or bathroom mirror. Even when Patrick goes downstairs to have breakfast with his family, he leaves a note. One time, Jonny woke up with a post-it stuck to his forehead. 

He taps his bracelet with his chin, counts to ten waiting for the returning vibration, for Patrick’s signal that he’s okay. Taps it again when it doesn’t come. And again. And again until he can’t breathe anymore.

He can’t breathe.

A stopped-up gulp. Another. Just a trickle past the knot in his throat, the vice around his lungs, heart hammering loud, now, and fast in his ears. He stumbles, tries to catch himself with his arm, but it’s his left side and there’s nothing there to help him, so he collides with the wall painfully, presses his forehead to the cool surface and closes his eyes.

He’s gone. Patrick’s gone. There wasn’t supposed to be a trick to it, no time limit, but what does he know. What does Jonny truly know of magic and ghosts and ancient deals made at midnight, except that they hurt and feed on the things you’re unwilling to give up. Children. Arms. Love. 

He’s so caught up in the sudden punched-out hole in his chest, he almost misses when his bracelet vibrates back, once, then three times in quick succession--I’m okay, and I’m sorry. It’s a jolt to his system, the relief like a punch to the gut. It knocks the rock in his windpipe right out and he gasps, breathes deep and loud the way it happens after being too long underwater, light-headed. He taps his own bracelet again, hand shaky under his chin. The vibration comes back right away.

Jonny rushes out of the bedroom, practically launches himself at the window in the living room with a view of the street where Patrick’s piece of shit car isn’t parked. They don’t really need a car in Chicago, but Patrick got one almost as soon as he could from his dad’s new job. He likes to feel like at any moment he could just leave if he wanted.

On the weekends, they often just go. Drive out of the city and hit the road until the tank is empty, and then they fill it again and drive some more, or turn around—whatever they want, they can go wherever they want. They wait for the familiar tug to call them back, test the distance, test the city and the hold it has.

Jonny collapses on the couch, hand on his stomach a hard press, like it could somehow help him breathe better, keep the painful, fearful twist of his insides at bay. He doesn’t have to text Patrick to know where he went.

Today is Harvest Day.

◉

One year, he thinks, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. At the stump on his left side where his arm used to be, phantom weight there in the space where there’s nothing. Phantom hand touching the edge of the counter. Phantom teeth into his phantom flesh tearing, gnawing, crunching.

One year ago. One year since.

◉

Jonny hesitates in front of his parents’ door. He doesn’t want to apologize to his mom for the fight they had yesterday. Doesn’t want to take back what he said about today, about her driving to Harvest Falls with David.

“I can’t risk it, Jonathan,” she said. “I really, really can’t.”

When he comes in, she’s sitting at the table with David, Dad finishing an omelette at the stove. 

Jonny pulls a chair and sits down, steals a strawberry from David’s plate.

“Hey!” 

“I’m coming with,” Jonny says around his mouthful without looking at her. He catches his dad freezing, muscles in his shoulders tightening for a quick second, then relaxing again. “I’m not worried,” he adds, because he needs to make that clear. “But Patrick’s there.”

His mother says nothing, only reaches out to squeeze his hand. His only hand. Because he lost his other one, his whole arm, to a monster a year ago. In Harvest Falls.

◉

The corn is chatty.

The sun is bright and warm—an Indian Summer kind of sun—so the fields are mostly just noise, little exclamations of delight and joy, shivery and dry, cheerful little rustling of stalks and leaves like a dog shaking itself after jumping in a lake, but instead of water it’s sunlight.

Jonny only half pays attention to it all while they drive, muffled as it is through the windows, under the engine sounds of the car, but he knows immediately when they’ve hit the limits of Harvest Falls.

 _He’s here,_ the corn says. _He came back._

Jonny snorts. It could be his imagination, but the corn sounds as surprised to see him as Jonny feels to be back here. 

For the third time in an hour he taps his bracelet. The replies are immediate now, but Jonny’s still tight inside, leg shaking in the cramped backseat of his parents’ car. He won’t feel right until he can actually see Patrick, see that he’s fine, see that he’s _here_.

“You said he was gone,” David says in the silence, the first thing he’s said since this morning. Not a word since his mother told him it was time to go.

“He is,” Jonny says, catching his mother’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“We just have to make extra sure, honey,” his mom adds.

David bites his lip, face closed off, his small fists clenched in his lap. 

Jonny leans sideways to check the road ahead through the windshield. “There it is,” he says, pointing, though his dad is already slowing down, pulling over. 

They park by the side of the road, right behind Patrick’s car, and cut the engine. Nobody moves. It’s mid-afternoon already, the air bright and thick as butter. 

Far ahead, at the end of that flat, flat road, they can see the glimmering mass of the town—the one Jonny still thinks of as his town—barely a small hill there, squashed between two walls of corn and dwarfed by looming mountains at its back. But even at this distance they’re close enough if something happens, well within the limits. His parents don’t seem any more willing to be any closer than he does.

“I’ll be back,” Jonny says, and gets out. He’s not even sure they hear him, the way they’re staring at the long length of the road, caught in that sight, their own memories, but he still waits until he’s well hidden within the corn before stopping, before taking a long shaky breath and bending forward with his head between his knees.

The corn bends over him like it’s trying to to soothe him. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t. Dammit, Patrick.

When he feels able to walk without the ground tilting beneath him, less shaky inside, he straightens up. Reaches out to glance the corn leaves with his fingertips. “Show me where he is,” he says.

The corn does.

◉

Patrick sits in the middle of a clearing. Even like this, in the middle of the day, Jonny knows this clearing, and he stops at the edge of it like he’s hit a wall and can’t go further. There’s no house here, nothing but a faint outline in the green, dry grass and dirt. But he knows this place. It lives inside him.

Their gazes catch and Patrick gives him a small smile, a quirk of his mouth almost a grimace, self-deprecation and apology all at once. The sun beats hard on his shorn head, and Jonny has the irrational impulse to tell him to put a hat on, as if sunburns are something to worry about right now. 

Patrick’s been keeping his hair short like that since they got to Chicago. Jonny found him one morning—maybe even the first morning—electric clippers in hand and hair all over the bathroom counter and sink.

“I wanted something different,” he’d said, catching Jonny’s eyes in the mirror. He’s been trying to look different from his ghost-self since then—trying to grow a beard, bulking up, even getting a tattoo along his left ribs. It makes him feel like he’s alive, Jonny thinks, like his body is real and solid and changeable. Because sometimes, Patrick has a hard time remembering he’s not dead. 

Shit, Jonny thinks, already moving, shoved out of his freeze and crossing the clearing to kneel in front of Patrick, tipping over to the right and on his ass five seconds later because he still struggles with his balance. He mirrors Patrick’s position instead, crossed-legs with their knees touching and quick as a flash, all habit and need, Patrick’s hand lands on Jonny’s thigh, slides up and down a little.

He’s a lot about the small touches, Patrick, not like before. It’s about making sure he can do it, touch Jonny, that his fingers won’t go through. Jonny’s just as bad, pressing touches whenever he can, staring hard until he’s certain he can’t see through Patrick. 

“Tell me.” Jonny’d wanted to yell at Patrick for scaring the fuck out of him this morning, for making Jonny come back here. Not just Harvest Falls but _here_ , this place. But there are shadows around Patrick that even the high sun can’t kill. 

Patrick bites his lip. His eyes are bright blue in the light, but red, too, with sleeplessness, purple bruises under them. He tips sideways so he can reach for his pocket, and there, at the centre of his palm when he opens his fist to show Jonny, lies a little blood-stained bone with a rune carved into it.

Jonny’s heart kicks fast and he grabs Patrick’s wrist, slide his fingers along to feel each fingertip.

“They’re all there,” Patrick says.

“But—“ Jonny starts. But this is _Patrick’s_ bone. The one Jonny used to raise his ghost. “Where?”

“I still had it in my pocket after everything,” Patrick says. “It’s mine. It’s my bone.”

“Yes.”

“But my fingers are whole.”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s inside me?”

Something inside Jonny twists, breaks a little, suddenly hurt. Hurt that Patrick didn’t tell him. Hurt that he’s kept this to himself for a whole year, not allowing Jonny to help him, while he carried this piece of himself around.

He swallows, pushes past it. “I don’t know,” he says, because it’s true. Jonny has learned how to talk to corn. Has raised a ghost. Has tattooed himself with ancient spells and cast out a monster, but he knows nothing of magic, of old, wild things that walk the world, creep under its surface, live in its bones. “We can find out,” he adds. “There’s time now. People we can ask. I still have the notes, the books.” He picks up the bone from Patrick’s hand and Patrick doesn’t stop him. He lets Jonny slip it into his own jeans, and sighs with relief when he does, lighter without it. 

Patrick smiles, shaky and grateful, but with a look in his eyes Jonny knows well. 

Sometimes Patrick likes pain. _Needs_ pain. 

Not all the time. Not even that often. But when he’s had one too many nightmares, and reality seems to slip away from him a little too much, and he’s just a ghost in a cornfield who can’t feel the world. When shaving his hair, and going for a run until his very real heartbeat is loud in his ears and air burns his lungs. When all of that isn’t enough. 

Jonny gives it to him, always, because Jonny would give him anything. And because Jonny remembers a time where Patrick wasn’t alive, but this isn’t it, and he needs Patrick to remember he is, too afraid of what could happen if he completely forgets. 

He generally doesn’t give it to him without being asked first—doesn’t actually enjoy hurting and bruising him beyond the knowledge that he’s pleasing Patrick by doing it—but…

Jonny punches him. Cranks his arm back and puts as much strength and force and momentum his sitting position allows him, and he punches him on the shoulder. Not a bro-punch, but a fist-fight-angry kind of punch. Patrick must see it coming but he doesn’t move to avoid it. It lands hard, resonates up Jonny’s right arm and sends Patrick on his back. He doesn’t cry out, barely braces himself for it, just a small groan passing his lips. 

He breathes heavy there for a second then sits back up.

“Again,” he says, red on his cheeks, eyes steely when he meets Jonny’s and Jonny doesn’t look away from them when he does it again. Does it on the same spot to make it hurt more, and follows Patrick this time when he falls back, covers him with his own body, traps him with his weight. 

“Why did you come here?” he asks, voice broken and breathless, teeth sinking hard into the meat of Patrick’s shoulder.

Patrick cries out. In pain or pleasure, Jonny doesn’t know. Sometimes it’s the same. He squirms under Jonny, like he wants to relieve the pressure over him, so Jonny lets himself drop more, traps him harder. Makes it uncomfortable. 

“Needed to see if it was here,” he gasps, wriggles enough to free his legs and wrap them around Jonny, cross them at the ankles and squeeze. “If it was real.”

This is where Patrick died. This is where they faced The Harvester. Where Jonny lost his arm. But… but it’s also where Patrick came back to life, came back to Jonny. 

“The house is gone,” he says, tipping his head back. “But the clearing isn’t.”

“Everything leaves a mark.” It feels like stating the obvious and an understatement at the same time. “But it’s real. It happened. It _happened_.” Punctuating the last word with a harsh, hurtful shove of his body. 

“Prove it.” 

“I’m not fucking you raw.” I’ll punch you and hurt you, but I won’t fuck you without lube is a weird line to have, but it’s Jonny’s right now. He dips in before Patrick can argue, licks deep into his parted mouth, wet and messy and bruising, harsh bite of the bottom lip at the end that makes Patrick cry out in pain, but smile up at him when Jonny pulls back.

“Let me rub one out on you, then,” he says, grin quick and sharp as a knife. 

Jonny goes easy when Patrick flips them, spreads his legs and lifts his ass when he does quick work of both their belts and zippers, and he’s already ready—already thick and leaking between his legs—when Patrick stops for a moment, catching his breath, gentle fingertips over Jonny’s stump. “Didn’t work again?”

He still has the urge to pull away when Patrick touches him there, but he swallows thickly instead, shakes his head. All the prosthetics he’s tried have been excruciatingly painful. He knows why, now. Has known from the start and was just being stubborn. He’s done trying, though he hadn’t told Patrick that yet. “It’s the price,” he says, instead. “It’s not fair if you can just replace it. It has—“

“—to cost something. Yeah, I know, but.”

But nothing. It’s not just the arm he gave up, paid up with. It’s everything he can’t do anymore without it. 

“Jonny—“ Patrick starts, but Jonny shakes his head again, reaches out with his the only hand he has and wraps his fingers around Patrick’s cock. He tugs hard, flicks his balls, makes him cry out. 

“Come on,” he says. “Take it. Make _me_ feel it.”

It’s fucked up, maybe, to fuck here, in this clearing. To grind against each other like this, hard and fast and dry, until it’s too much—too much chafing, too much heat, too much pressure inside from everything. Too much is what they need sometimes. 

“You’re alive,” he says, and twists Patrick’s nipple hard through his shirt, rough and mean.

Patrick shouts, pulls away in time to come into the grass beside Jonny’s hip, fist tight and fast on his cock, his face twisted into something ugly that Jonny loves.

“Fuck you,” Patrick says, vicious on the sounds. He’s not talking to Jonny. 

“Come on,” Jonny says with a sharp pinch to Patrick’s side, not done making Patrick feel it. “Gonna make you choke on it.”

Patrick doesn’t need to be told twice, goes down on Jonny’s dick with a graceless, excited scramble, and a loud moan when his mouth is full. Sometimes he misses Patrick’s longer hair to grab onto when they do this, but it’s easy all the same in this position to press hard on his head and fuck up into his mouth until tears leak out of Patrick’s eyes. Jonny lets him up, wet loud gasp filling the air.

“Again?”

Patrick nods, so Jonny presses on his head some more. They do it three more times—longer than usual. Each time Patrick staying down longer, choking wet noises and fists tight into Jonny’s shirt. Long enough it feels on the edge of something bad, instead of something needed. Jonny’s about to call it quits when Patrick brushes his hand off his head with his own and starts sucking on the head of Jonny’s cock instead, catching his breath around it, tongue slack and fat on the underside for Jonny to rub against. His face is a mess—red and wet with spit and tears, but his eyes are bright and when they catch Jonny’s he smiles, lips stretched and eyes crinkling, and he looks like he’s Jonny’s Patrick again. 

Jonny grabs the grass with his right fist, phantom hand flat on his other side, and comes from this, the way Patrick’s looking at him, making him feel—rough-edged, punched out of him.

Patrick strokes him through it until Jonny twitches with oversensitivity, little jerks of his body, hiss between his teeth. Patrick lets go gently, then flops in the grass at his side, breathing hard through his nose. When no swallowing or spitting occurs, Jonny turns, says, “Gimme,” and kisses him, fingers at Patrick’s jaw, lips sealing over his when they open to take his come out of his mouth. 

They take a long time to catch their breaths. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the bone,” Patrick says, eventually. “I don’t know why I didn’t. You were in the hospital when I found it in my jeans and after that… I don’t know.”

Jonny licks his lips. He stares at the sky. “I feel my left arm all the time,” he says, the terrifying little secret he’s been carrying around.

“The doctors said it was normal, that—“

“No,” Jonny interrupts, turns on his side again to look at Patrick. “Not like that. I feel it there like a ghost. I feel it touching things but without feeling at the same time.”

Patrick frowns, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Like right now,” Jonny says, softly. “Right now I’m touching your cheek with my left hand.” Phantom fingers trace Patrick’s cheekbones, and he knows even though Patrick turns into the touch, that he can’t feel it, is only imagining it there. “I feel your skin under it, but I also don’t feel it at the same time. It’s like… like my brain registers a touch but nothing else, there’s no other feeling there. It’s… empty. Useless. It’s just a reminder of what was there.” 

Sometimes Jonny wonders how high the price he paid really was, and if he’s really done paying. 

Patrick’s hand goes to his cheek, like somehow he could cover Jonny’s ghost hand with his own, though neither of them feel each other’s touch there. But they pretend they do for a while.

◉

It’s sunset when they come out of the field.

Patrick’s family arrived while they were gone, parked on the other side of the road. Their parents look at them when they emerge but they say nothing. Patrick walks to his parents where they’re waiting beside their car and hugs them. He says something too low for Jonny to hear.

“Alright?” Jonny’s dad whispers to him. Everything is hushed, even the wind over the field has died down and the whole world is holding its breath while the sky turns bright pink. Even the corn is quiet.

Jacqueline, Jessica and David stand in the middle of the road. They face Harvest Falls like they’re facing an upcoming battle, the rise of an army over the crest of a hill, bracing for impact. Bracing to be Called. 

Jonny sits on the hood of Patrick’s car and waits. His mom pats his knee and he puts his hand over hers for a moment, before she lets go and joins Donna, hugging Patrick as they cross the street. Patrick climbs beside him and together, with their families, they watch the sun go down behind the mountains, watch the lights of Harvest Falls in the distance.

No one moves until it’s dark and well past Calling time, not until Donna’s phone rings in the quiet and startles them all. “Yes,” she says into it, voice shaky and wet. “All good. It’s over, honey. It’s really over.”

“Erica,” Patrick whispers, but Jonny’s mind is stuck on those words: It’s over. All good. 

He slides two fingers along the inside of Patrick’s forearm, right to his wrist where he can feel his steady pulse there, his own life beat. Hooks his chin on Patrick’s shoulder, lips by his ear. “You’re alive,” he repeats, barely a breath. “You’re with me and you’re alive and nothing will take you.”

 

 


End file.
